In Spring EL, you can reference a bean, and nested properties using a ‘dot (.)‘ symbol. For example, “bean.property_name“.

public class Customer { 
    @Value("#{addressBean.country}") 
    private String country;

In above code snippet, it inject the value of “country” property from “addressBean” bean into current “customer” class, “country” property.

Spring EL in Annotation

See following example, show you how to use SpEL to reference a bean, bean property and also it’s method.

package com.mkyong.core;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Value;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component("customerBean")
public class Customer { 
    @Value("#{addressBean}") 
    private Address address; 
    @Value("#{addressBean.country}") 
    private String country; 
    @Value("#{addressBean.getFullAddress('mkyong')}") 
    private String fullAddress; 
    //getter and setter methods 
    @Override public String toString() { 
        return "Customer [address=" + address + "\n, country=" + country + "\n, fullAddress=" + fullAddress + "]"; 
    }
}

package com.mkyong.core;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Value;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component("addressBean")
public class Address { 
    @Value("Block ABC, LakeView") 
    private String street; 
    @Value("98700") 
    private int postcode; 
    @Value("US") 
    private String country;
 
    public String getFullAddress(String prefix) { 
        return prefix + " : " + street + " " + postcode + " " + country; 
    } 
   //getter and setter methods 
    public void setCountry(String country) { 
        this.country = country; 
    } 

    @Override 
    public String toString() { 
        return "Address [street=" + street + ", postcode=" + postcode + ", country=" + country + "]"; 
    }
}

*Run it *

Customer obj = (Customer) context.getBean("customerBean"); 
System.out.println(obj);

Output

Customer [address=Address [street=Block ABC, LakeView, postcode=98700, country=US], country=US, fullAddress=mkyong : Block ABC, LakeView 98700 US]

Spring EL in XML
See equivalent version in bean definition XML file.

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" 
             xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
             xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans    
                                                http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd"> 
    <bean id="customerBean" class="com.mkyong.core.Customer"> 
        <property name="address" value="#{addressBean}" /> 
        <property name="country" value="#{addressBean.country}" /> 
       <property name="fullAddress" value="#{addressBean.getFullAddress('mkyong')}" />  
   </bean> 
   <bean id="addressBean" class="com.mkyong.core.Address"> 
         <property name="street" value="Block ABC, LakeView" /> 
        <property name="postcode" value="98700" /> 
       <property name="country" value="US" /> 
    </bean>
</beans>